How to use Grammarly in Ulysses

Ulysses is a wonderful app that nicely works on my MacBook Pro and iPhone. I use the Mac to write articles and the iPhone to add ideas, notes and check on previous content; that kind of things.

I have written a lot of stuff in the previous years and for that, I’ve used several applications. There is Notepad on Windows; pretty minimal but effective and Ms. Word for the more formal, company documents. I have also used iCloud Notes quite a lot and dabbled a little bit in OneNote and EverNote but didn’t like these.

Then I got the opportunity to write some IT-related articles for ITNext. First I started in Ms. Word but since I needed to switch back and forth between a Mac and Windows, this became problematic due to the differences of Word in both operating systems. Also, my editor was very strict on grammar and spelling; so I went over to Grammarly and happily wrote all my articles in their app.

But after more than half a year I started to miss something; especially to have some markup and possibilities to share or export my articles. The company ITNext publishes all their articles via Medium but there was no integration between Medium and Grammarly.

So, after a day searching I found Ulysses which ticked all my ‘I need that’ boxes. It does have the disadvantage of having a subscription model but the annual price was acceptable for me, surely after I found a nice online discount.

However, I did quite like the font and font size Grammarly had been using in its app. After some investigation, I found the font name but it was not one that was generally available but only commercial; Diaria Pro Light. So I settled on a different but free one called Saro which I found a capable replacement. I then played around with some settings within Ulysses and was in business.

But, after some time, I missed the Grammarly checks. Ulysses does have grammar and spelling checks but uses what the local operating system provides. Unfortunately, there is no Grammarly integration and copy-pasting the text around was also not what I had in mind. Luckily I found a solution.

For this, you need besides a Mac also an iPhone and have Ulysses installed on both. Then, go to the App Store and look for ‘Grammarly Keyboard’, install it on your iPhone and give it the needed rights.

Now, you can use the Grammarly Keyboard for every text you type in, including within Ulysses. On itself great, but if you are not really using Ulysses on the iPhone for long epistles then it has not much use.

Fortunately, there is another option: if you are in Ulysses and have a sheet open, click on it to activate the keyboard.

If you have Grammarly Keyboard installed but another keyboard appears then click on the ‘world globe’ to cycle through your keyboards.

When Grammarly Keyboard is open you see in the top left the green logo icon, next to it you find normally its suggestions. Now, if you click on the green icon itself then you have the possibility to check the whole sheet. Work through the suggestions and then presto; your Ulysses sheet is checked by Grammarly. And because Ulysses works via iCloud your work on your Mac is also synchronized; nice!

So the workflow for this is:

• create your article in Ulysses,
• use the built-in spell check when it pops up and if you are finished with your draft,
• open it on your iPhone and check the whole sheet with the Grammarly keyboard.

After this, your changes are also synchronized on your Mac and is your revised article ready for export/publish.

Happy writing!

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